


Knicky Knocky Nine Doors

by toomuchplor



Series: Knick Knock [1]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Kid Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-10-26
Updated: 2007-10-26
Packaged: 2017-10-20 04:22:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/208681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toomuchplor/pseuds/toomuchplor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“Okay, let’s dial home and let Elizabeth know we need to set an extra place at the dinner table.”</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Knicky Knocky Nine Doors

**Author's Note:**

> No. Shame. I have more of this already written, and I will post it soon. Promise! That being said, I don't plan for this to be a WiP proper, i.e. I expect the story will unwind in a series of linked ficlets rather than as a continuous narrative. Yay for laziness!

“Another ding dong ditch,” Elizabeth said wearily as the team strode into the gate room, already geared up. “We had an unscheduled dial-in, we got an address, and--”

“--We have absolutely no way,” interjected Rodney, knowing the end of the story, “of telling whether it’s for real or some kind of bait. Sometimes I rue the day that I came up with Ancient call display.” His gaze automatically flicked over to the small LCD screen, incongruously human, perched to one side of the DHD. Sure enough, it was flashing red with the words ‘Unknown Caller’, followed by an unfamiliar sequence of symbols.

“It’d be fine,” said John as he checked the safety on his P-90, “if you’d just built in a voicemail function too.”

“Or some other kind of automated message system,” Elizabeth added, mouth curling.

“Hi, you’ve reached the Lost City of Atlantis,” said John in a clinically pleasant voice. “Your call is important to us and we’ll get right back to you --”

“Just as soon as we figure out whether you want us dead or not,” Rodney added, frowning at the broken second buckle on his tac vest.

“-- so please leave a detailed message after the beep,” finished John.

“What’d the MALP say?” asked Ronon, patient as ever with their Earth in-jokes.

“Green, ambient temp of twenty-three degrees C,” said Rodney, giving up on the fractured plastic and knotting the ends of the nylon straps together, “a single life sign, twenty meters from the gate, but nothing visible on the camera’s telemetry. No EM fields nearby, so no suspicious technology. Could be a sharpshooter, though.”

“So I’m going first,” said John, dividing a warning look among the team members. “Teyla, you get our six, Ronon, I want you on the right -- the MALP reads the life sign as coming in at about two o’clock. Hold your fire unless we’re fired upon. Rodney, be ready with the IDC in case we need to gate back in a hurry.” He raised his head up and nodded at the gate tech on duty.

Rodney got his handheld life signs detector out, tilting the display away from the reflection of the rippling event horizon so he’d be ready to read whatever it told him as soon as they got across the gate.

“Two o’clock, twelve meters,” Rodney spoke, stumbling down the first stone step on the other side. “And make a note, this planet’s not wheelchair accessible.”

“Rodney,” said John in warning, his voice taut, and Rodney looked up, ready to duck or dive for the DHD, whichever seemed more prudent.

Their life sign was in visual range, ten meters and closing. It had honey blond hair sticking up from the crown of its head and it was wearing what was unmistakably an Atlantis expedition jacket. There was a piece of white paper pinned to one lapel, flapping in the wind, and Ronon was the one who got close enough to see for himself, kneeling in front of the child, making himself look as small and unthreatening as possible -- no trifling feat for someone built like Ronon.

The child was oddly unafraid, though, only reaching out one hand to touch Ronon’s hair while Ronon captured the flag of the paper. “Huh,” said Ronon, looking at it.

“Colonel, isn’t that your jacket?” said Teyla, and sure enough -- it was indeed John’s long-absent black leather expedition jacket. “Did it not go missing many years ago?”

“Guess we know where it went,” said John, blinking.

“What’s it say?” asked Rodney, impatient. The rest of the team shuffled closer, surrounding the child and craning to look at the piece of paper.

“It’s ours, our letterhead,’” said Ronon, smoothing the surface of the paper enough so that Rodney could see the small SGC logo in the corner, could make out the faded tracing of John’s messy printing: _eggs, leafy greens, root vegetables, white meat, lentils_. A shopping list, a grocery list, which meant it had been written sometime since...but it was so faded, and how long had it been, anyway, since any of the team members needed to remind themselves what the expedition nutritionist wanted them to find?

“2007,” said John, grimly, answering the question in all their minds.

Ronon turned the paper over, tearing it free of the pin, and showed everyone that there was writing on the other side. In belabored Latin lettering, Rodney saw the phrase: ‘this child is a Son of the City of the Ancestors’.

“Oh my god,” said Rodney, appalled. “We should have seen this coming.”

“Seen what coming?” asked Sheppard, confused.

Rodney grimaced and gestured at the child, his wild hair and his stupidly unafraid demeanor. “Isn’t it completely obvious?”

“I guess not,” ventured Sheppard, when Teyla and Ronon shook their heads in uncertainty. “Care to elaborate for the group?”

Rodney snatched the paper away from Ronon and flapped it in Sheppard’s face. “It says it right here -- this kid is the result of one of your little offworld dalliances.”

“He is not!” Sheppard protested immediately while Ronon hid a smile behind a raised fist and Teyla averted her eyes.

“Please! Look at his hair!” Rodney said, rolling his eyes. “Never mind the jacket and the note.”

“Perhaps we should not discuss this in front of the child,” Teyla ventured.

“Are there any other life signs in the vicinity?” asked Sheppard sharply. “I mean, someone must have left him here, he must _belong_ to someone.”

Rodney consulted his life sign detector, adjusting the radius of the scan with a few finger-taps. “Nothing for miles around,” he reported. “Whoever brought him here has left the immediate area. It’s obvious that they wanted us to find the kid, and not them.”

“So what do we do with him?” asked Sheppard.

“He could be a trap,” Rodney posited, and they all took a minute to contemplate the little boy, his fly-away hair, and his big blue eyes.

“Probably not,” admitted Sheppard. “So -- we take him back to Atlantis?”

“You wanna come with us?” said Ronon, slapping his big hand down on the child’s shoulder.

The boy didn’t speak, but looked worried for the first time since they’d arrived. Ronon seemed to understand the expression, digging in his shirt and coming up with a precious, hoarded PowerBar. Rodney watched enviously as Ronon ripped it open, bit off a piece to show its edibility, and held it out to the boy.

“Atta boy,” said John approvingly as the child took the proffered food and tentatively nibbled at it before breaking into a smile. “Okay, let’s dial home and let Elizabeth know we need to set an extra place at the dinner table.”

“Behold,” orated Rodney with a sneer, dialing the gate, “for we bring the harvest from the sowing of the Colonel’s wild oats, the fruit of his errant loins, the tangible proof of our military leader’s virility, the --”

Sheppard smacked the back of Rodney’s head to shut him up before he opened the radio channel. “Atlantis, this is Sheppard. We need a quarantine level two for the gate room and a medical team ready to do a spot-check on an offworld visitor.”

“John, this is Elizabeth. What have we got?”

“We’ve got Exhibit A for Keller’s lecture on the dangers of neglecting proper birth control,” said Rodney before Sheppard could stop him.

“Say again, Rodney?” said Elizabeth, puzzled.

“It’s a kid,” supplied Ronon, who had somehow lured the boy into his arms and was settling him on his hip, as comfortable as though the kid were a weapon and not a sticky-fingered toddler.

“It’s John Sheppard Jr.,” Rodney added, smirking.

John cleared his throat loudly. “It seems to be an abandoned minor, Elizabeth. Can’t leave him here alone.”

“Copy that, John. We’ll have a team ready, come on home.”

* * *

It took only a brief inspection to clear the boy for the journey to the infirmary; Atlantis's internal sensors could be trusted to detect most pathogens, as well as to check for nanites and other possible sources of infection.

"I don't think he wants to let go of Ronon," observed the medical tech as he tried to pry the child away.

"He doesn't have to," Ronon pointed out. "I'll carry him."

John hung back a bit as they headed towards the infirmary, wanting the solitude; of course, Rodney entirely failed to take the hint of his body language and fell into step next to him.

"He hasn't said anything," Rodney observed busily. "I mean, I know 'laconic' is probably written into his genetic code, but he looks old enough to be talking at least a little, right?"

"Who knows what he's been through," said John, thinking of culled planets and being left behind. "And he's not my kid, for god's sake, stop acting like you think he really is."

"Of course he's yours," said Rodney, waving a hand in dismissal. "I think that's perfectly clear from the jacket and the note. Besides, look at him. The only way his hair could look more like yours is if it spontaneously changed color and jumped onto your head."

John blinked and started to frown. The kid's hair was about three inches long all over and even if it was a little flyaway, that was hardly enough to convince John that the resemblance was that strong. "Well, if we're going by the stupidly obvious," said John, shrugging, "he must be Zelenka's, because they're both short."

Rodney snorted. "Don't worry, Colonel. I may not be thrilled to be personally confronted by the fruit of your loins, but I hardly thought that you were a boy scout up until--"

"McKay," John snapped, with a meaningful sideward glare.

"Right, right," said Rodney, lips going thin and tight with impatience. "Though I'm kind of surprised that you're not embracing this more; seems to fit right in with all those talks you're always giving the marines about our determination to keep Earth's legacy alive."

Up ahead, the little boy had spied one of Ronon's many knife sheaths and was reaching gleefully for it, waggling his small fingers in the universal gesture for 'gimme'.

"Ha," said Rodney, pointing at the tableau. "A natural lust for weaponry. I rest my case."

* * *

Once they coaxed the boy to open his mouth for the cheek scraper (Ronon went first, then Teyla, and finally Rodney, before the child seemed to trust that it wouldn't hurt a bit) it was a fast enough process.

"We have all Atlantis personnel in the database," said Keller, "and with the Ancient sequencer it'll only take a couple of minutes to find our match." She cleared her throat and dropped her gaze to avoid Sheppard's burning glare. "If there is a match, of course," she corrected with a vague smile.

The child was seated on an infirmary bed, dipping his fingers into a bowl of vanilla pudding from the mess hall and then licking them clean.

"Kate's pulling a few names of personnel who might be interested in taking on another child," said Elizabeth. "He'd be the oldest by a few months at least." She smiled, obviously imagining the small boy as the latest addition to Atlantis's growing preschool population.

"So if this pulls up a match," said Sheppard, ignoring Rodney's doubtful huff, "you're not going to expect the biological father to take over?"

"That hardly seems fair," said Elizabeth, shaking her head, "to anyone, least of all to this child."

Rodney poked Sheppard. "Stop looking so relieved."

The Ancient sequencer pinged and Keller's eyebrows shot up. "That was faster than I"-- she began, and stopped, mouth dropping open. "We have a match," she said, a little stunned.

"Ha!" said Rodney again, happy to be right even as his guts twisted a little. "Didn't I say that --"

"Congratulations, Dr. McKay," interrupted Keller, not trying very hard to hold back her disbelieving laughter. "He's -- all yours."

"He's -- what? No, your stupid machine is broken, you're doing it wrong!" Rodney shouted, while beside him John broke into a sunny carefree grin. "Come on, I think I'd _remember_ if I"--

"More," said the little boy, startling everyone as he broke his silence for the first time. He was proffering up his empty pudding bowl, waving his spoon at Keller. "I want more."

"Huh. He's a McKay all right," said Ronon, after a moment of stunned silence had passed.

"I want more _now_ ," said the boy, lifting a stubborn chin, setting his small crooked mouth in a disappointed frown.

"He's not a McKay," Rodney shouted, because _really_ , this was _insane_.

"Actually," said Keller. "He's not just a McKay. He's a Rodney McKay." She tapped her display and called up a graphic showing the congruence between the child's genetic code and what was presumably Rodney's DNA. "It's a one hundred percent match. Dr. McKay, genetically speaking, this child is you."


End file.
